Jul. 18, 2013
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by Liza Mundy, USATODAY

by Liza Mundy, USATODAY

History is full of bold and charismatic aviatrixes: Amelia Earhart, the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic; Bessie Coleman, the first African American to earn a pilot's license; Elinor Smith, the "Flying Flapper of Freeport," who in 1928, at the age of 17, became the first and only pilot to fly under New York City's four East River bridges, a stunt she did on a dare. To name just a few.

Commercial airlines, however, are not similarly replete: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 4 percent of aircraft pilots and flight engineers are female, a figure that has not budged much over the decades.

So it's striking that, in the wake of the July 6 crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214, the official in charge of the investigation is Deborah Hersman, indefatigable chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board. As she and her staff have investigated what caused a Boeing 777 to crash while landing in San Francisco, Hersman has delivered public briefings that are models of transparency, patience, and aviation knowhow. Her cool professionalism is a welcome rebuttal to a widespread lack of faith these days in public servants and in government generally.

Hersman is no anomaly ‚?? the face of commercial aviation oversight at the federal level has often been female in recent decades. Marion Blakey, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, has headed both NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration. Her predecessor at FAA was Jane Garvey, a former director of Boston's Logan International. The person who initiated the nationwide shutdown of air traffic on 9/11 was Susan Baer, who at the time was the general manager of the Newark airport. Baer has run all three major airports in the New York area.

As Amy Laboda, editor-in-chief of Aviation for Womenmagazine, points out, women have risen through the ranks to head some large regional air traffic control facilities. And while female names are largely absent from the ranks of major airline CEOs, women head three of the six top defense contractors.

But why do women remain so scarce in the cockpit?

Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, who has written extensively about formal barriers that kept women out of certain jobs during parts of the 20th century, told me in an email that "one of the great barriers to women in aviation was the training that the military gave to men." Many commercial airline pilots start out as fighter pilots, a job that only became open to women in 1993.

All that time away from home is another barrier. "More than half of male pilots are divorced, and there's another half that have been divorced twice-it's a hard life for anybody who wants to have a family," says Amy Laboda. "I didn't become a pilot for those reasons." (Still, most flight attendants are female.)

Sexism, alas, can't be excluded as a contributing cause. Viewer comments on YouTube videos of Deborah Hersman's briefings reveal not only geeky obsessions with technical aviation terms (and her mastery of them) but a focus on her looks. These give a glimmer of what it's like for any woman to spend hours shut up in a tight space with a male pilot or co-pilot who may not want her there.

Our culture also seems to have an easier time accepting women in leadership roles involving public safety. The model here would be former Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole, who famously brought American cars the rear-window automobile brake lamp, known in her honor as the "Liddy Light." Women are more acceptable as leaders and enforcers when they adopt the quasi-maternal role of making sure we're safe and sound.

But it would be good to see more women pilots in the captain's seat. Like all industries integral to our progress and well-being, the airline business needs to maximize the pool of talented professionals from which it draws. The next time I sit white-knuckled in my seat during a round of turbulence, I know whose voice I would want to hear over the loudspeaker telling me it's nothing to worry about: Deborah Hersman's. Then I might be inclined to believe it.

Liza Mundy is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Our Culture. She wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.